If I Can’t Dance It’s Not My Revolution

IN THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN CULTURE, PEOPLE KNEW HOW TO SHAKE THEIR BOOTIES AND IN DOING SO, THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE WERE REVEALED.

Then along came language, social hierarchy, overinflated beliefs and the mirages of under-standing. Whereas human beings embodied the most important truths in the beginning, it all went to hell when we stilled our bodies and fed too many words to our minds.

Look at the oldest library in the world – the rock art of southern Africa. What we see are images of people dancing themselves into ecstasy. Many generations later the elders of the oldest living culture on Earth today, the Kalahari Bushmen, still know that the electrified body inspired by heightened feelings – rather than anything remotely related to a calm and still presence – is the master key to being fully alive.

What is most important has little or nothing to do with words and linguistic understanding. As the Bushmen say, words can trick us into believing anything. With word trickery we may end up worshipping a pile of elephant dung or a heap of metal. Somewhere between the early cradle of civilization and the internet, our species made the colossal mistake of proclaiming that words, theories and understandings are the roads to salvation and happiness. If this is true or even partially true, it means we have been misled for over a thousand years. The word games have led us to posit one form of gender, race, culture, nation, or religion as superior to others – thereby justifying any and all acts of arrogant greed, war and destruction of life and planet.

Religions and philosophies can never deliver the truth we most deeply desire. Our born destiny is the same as the first humans – to release our bodies, our whole beings, into feeling and expressing the deepest joy and ecstasy. In other words, dancing ourselves into heaven, enlightenment, peace and love. If there is anything history teaches, it is that words and understandings aren’t giving us anything but more of the same bullshit. We need to start up the wild drumming and shake off the words and stuck thoughts.

If we don’t free ourselves to be ecstatically tuned and happy, we may continue going to hell while taking the planet down with us.

What does it mean to sound the revolution? Here’s a few teasers that provide some hints – remember, it can’t be said in words:

You gotta go beyond dance: no choreography, let the body be free to move without purpose.

Recognize that whatever the great mystery or god is, it hates all reasonable and tamed definitions.

Meditation without wild ecstasy is a dead end.

Don’t sit still when you are excited. Get up and move!

The wisdom of the East is as ignorant as the wisdom of the West. Look where both have gotten us. Let’s consider the wisdom of Mother Africa, the ancestral culture that honored rhythms more than words.

The revolution is through sounding it and allowing yourself to be fully shaken.

The trouble with gurus is that they don’t have a rhythm, they don’t shake and they don’t wiggle their ass.

Military force is an option that our people resort to because nothing else works.

September 2, 2010

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit magazine fighting back against the hostile takeover of our psychological, physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.